Poland confirms first bird flu case

Two dead swans have tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in Poland's first confirmed outbreak of the virus.

Polish officials confirmed today the positive results of the tests, carried out on birds found on Thursday in Torun, 120 miles north-west of the capital, Warsaw.

"Both birds had the H5N1 strain of bird flu," Tadeusz Wijaszka, director of the National Veterinary Research Institute in Pulawy, told the AP news agency.

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The Polish government has set up an exclusion zone around the banks of the River Vistula, where the infected swans were found, with prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz calling for calm and insisting that measures were in place to contain the spread of the virus.

Samples taken from the two swans have been sent to the EU's specialist laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, to undergo further examination.

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The spread of bird flu to Poland will exacerbate concerns about an imminent Europe-wide bird flu outbreak, especially with Russian authorities investigating a further possible case of H5N1 in the south-east of the country.

An emergency situation ministry official in the province of Astrakhan confirmed that fowl found dead in the region had tested positive for the H5 strain of bird flu.

He added that further tests were being undertaken to determine whether the poultry had died from H5N1.

According to the ministry, 800,000 birds in Russia have died after contracting bird flu or have been culled as a precaution over the past month.

While the virus has yet to spread to humans on a large scale in Europe so far, experts have warned that should it do so, it could result in a global pandemic resulting in the deaths of millions of people.

Earlier today, Chinese health authorities confirmed the country's ninth human bird flu death, announcing that a man who died in the southern province of Guangdong had tested positive for H5N1.

However, Beijing has stressed that no cases of human-to-human infection have been found to date.

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